o the uninitiated it might look like a hell of a gamble for The Wildhearts to use a collection of their recent reformation single’s flipsides as their first US release since their debut album way back in 1993. Whose idea was it to herald the band’s comeback attempt at cracking America with songs not even good enough to make into 2003’s pop metal comeback The Wildhearts Must Be Destroyed?

This extended wrap-up of the Japanese B-side compilation Riff after Motherfucking Riff shows the band displaying its harsher, investigational and noisier style in generating consistently punishingly mnemonically catchy songs; The Wildhearts logo may as well be a quality stamp. They’ve struck a formula where they piece together slices of hard rock from Anthrax to The Flamin' Groovies to Metallica to The Beatles sometimes going so far as to give songs that “Good Vibrations” feeling of relatively incongruent elements edited into a more powerful whole. Where many rock acts build songs around a single killer (they hope) guitar part, they throw riff after riff into their songs. While they aren’t reinventing anything, there isn’t another UK act I can think of who do what they do.

Ginger’s distinctive lyrical worldview is that of a man urging positivity like it’s the only way out, but refuses to plough the desperate and self pitying furrow that many lyricists seem to enjoy wallowing in. Instead of ‘Woe is me’ we get the enforced activism of the guitar wall of “Move On” and its ‘Won’t find no future by fixing the past’ refrain. Covering love, sex, everyday life’s ups and down (without being all Albarn about it) and those infuriating bastards who spoil it for everyone else, he communicates the quirks of existence with closing time humour and candour.

The sense of ‘I’m sure I’ve heard this before somewhere’ hangs over much of the music here because songs as good as these are not normally relegated to singles, especially considering how many singles actually get bought these day. Booting off with the only A-side here, the sing-along chorus of “Stormy in the North, Karma in the South” powers along with its punchy bass and dive bomber riff showing off the trademark harmonies between CJ and Ginger. Seriously strong melodies appear in every song with the only downer being “If I Decide”, and that’s only because the usual lift of the Wildhearts chorus comes in too late and too quiet. “Action Panzer” sees Motorhead going “Paranoid” while “Looking for the One” ends up leaping between grinding riffs and Cheap Trick. The chorus of “Putting it On” is instantly memorable with the full band bawling along with punches of noisy static (a la Endless Nameless). Being the best song they’ve released since their reformation, the disastrous omission of “You Got To Get Through What You've Got To Go Through To Get What You Want, But You Got to Know What You Want To Get Through What You Got To Go Through” stands out like an Eskimo’s nipple.

Even though these songs are only drawn from their latest singles, Riff After Riff is nearly up there with collections like Sci-Fi Lullabies, Turns into Stone and Standing on a Beach. It certainly stands head and shoulders above The Masterplan by those knicker sniffers Oasis’ it takes a band that doesn’t write ‘B-sides’ to get away with releasing a B-side compilation.